From March 8th to 12th, 2019, Professor Li-ping Fu, Dean of the College of Public Administration at Tianjin University, led a delegation of teachers and students to Washington DC to participate in the ASPA (American Society of Public Administration) Annual Conference. ASPA is one of the most important academic conferences in the United States, presenting the hot spots of global public management research, and is a subject that the academic community pays close attention to.
This year is the 80th annual meeting of ASPA. It was organized by American University and participants included more than 1,000 Public Management experts, scholars and politicians from more than 40 countries and regions around the world.
This conference covered issues related to cooperation between government and social organizations, public-private partnership and public service outsourcing in the field of public management. The conference also highlighted national management practices, introduced new approaches to public administration, and discussed innovation in the government and nonprofit sectors. This year's conference had five main sections: public finance, infrastructure, social equity, public services and global public management, which represent the most important challenges and opportunities in the field of public management.
The teachers and students of the College of Public Administration of Tianjin University presented their research report: “Public transportation service innovation challenges to government supervision: How to balance public demand and urban governance costs”. The sub-forum also addressed the preference of English journal editors in two aspects of “scientific nature of the data collection" and "innovative research topic". During the conference, they also communicated with professors of both foreign and domestic public management colleges on the development of public management discipline and the construction of talent team.
After the meeting, Professor Li-ping Fu led the team to the University of Pennsylvania’s College of Social Policy and Practice, where he was received by Professor Chao Guo, Vice Chairman of the Fox Leadership Center and Director of the Master of International Public Administration Program. Professor Ram Cnaan, the former president of ARNOVA (Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action), Scott Moore, the Director of the Global China Program at the University of Pennsylvania, Professor Joseph Tierney, Executive Director of the Fox Leadership Center, and staff and doctoral students from the center participated in the panel discussion.
Li-ping Fu introduced the history, discipline development and teaching research of Tianjin University College of Management and Economics (CoME) and the College of Public Administration of Tianjin University. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania introduced the cooperation projects with China in recent years. The two sides exchanged in-depth views on China's aging population, the development of elderly care services, the development of survey projects and other academic issues as well as future project cooperation.
Later, Li-ping Fu and her entourage went to New York to visit the College of Social Work and the China Social Policy Center of Columbia University. Dr. Jin-yu Liu, an assistant professor of the center, received the delegation. Jin-yu Liu shared her own research experience and academic interests and introduced the main research directions of the College of Social Work of Columbia University. Li-ping Fu introduced the progress of health pension research and micro-data surveys of the College of Public Administration of Tianjin University in recent years.
By College of Management and Economics
Editors: Eva Yin & Doris Harrington
